Page 6 of A Flash of Neon
It’s started to rain outside, so once we’ve finished our drinks we take a walk through the shopping centre. Neon seems weirdly fascinated by the place. He stops to stare at the decorative animal clock that moves and plays a tune every hour, looking far more amazed than any of the toddlers watching, then wanders into a homeware shop and spends twenty minutes admiring things like oven gloves and cake tins. If Caitlin and Hannah find it strange, they don’t say so – he’s cool enough to them to get away with being a bit quirky. Besides, they’re never as critical with boys.
When we pass a make-up shop, I remind Hannah that she still needs to buy her mascara. She and Caitlin head inside while Neon and I linger by the entrance. As soon as my friends are out of earshot, I whirl round to face him. He’s gazing at an advert for face cream like it’s theMona Lisa.
“What’s going on?” I whisper. “What is this?”
Neon looks up from the poster. “What do you mean?”
“You know what I mean!” I hiss. I take a look around me, sure that someone else will be able to see something off about Neon. “I … I made you up. You’re not real!”
When I created Neon’s profile, I knew better than to steal some random person’s pictures to pass off as his. It’s way too easy to search for those online, and Caitlin would have found the original in five minutes. AI images weren’t safe, either – there are websites that can detect those, and the program might give him six fingers or eight front teeth without my noticing.
Instead, I went on an app that filters photos to change people’s appearance. I took some selfies and turned myself into a boy, making my face and lips thinner, my hair shorter and much darker, my eyes brown instead of blue. I added freckles and a birthmark shaped like France above my eyebrow. I smiled with my teeth, something I don’t do much in photos, and wiped away the braces that I had back then. Neon Hart is me, painted with pixels.
“Um, OK,ouch.” He laughs. “You did make me up, yes. But I’m here now. I think that makes me real enough.”
That’s not the response I expected. I don’t know how I thought Neon would explain himself, but acknowledging that he did indeed come from my imagination was not it.
“But you can’t be. You just can’t.”
Neon smiles and shrugs. Maybe I’m hallucinating, or stuck in a hyperrealistic dream. To test my theory, I try to slice my hand through his body, the way people do with ghosts in films. My fingers bump against his arm. It’s not hard but Neon put his hand on his bicep and winces dramatically.
“Again: ouch!”
“But h-how?” I say, stumbling over the words. “What do you mean, real enough?”
“I’ll explain everything later, I promise. There are too many people around right now, and I don’t want your friends to overhear.” He puts his hands on my shoulders and gives them a soft shake. “Come on, Laurie, lighten up. Aren’t you even a bit happy to see me?”
Despite the smile, he sounds hurt. I’m too busy working throughstunnedandconfusedandworried I’m having a breakdownto get anywhere close tohappyright now, but it would be rude to tell Neon that.
“Of course I am. It’s just … where are you going to stay?”
Neon frowns. “What do you mean? I thought I was staying at yours?”
“My family don’t know about you!”
“But you said your moms would be away all week.” He beams. “So it’s perfect timing.”
“They haven’t left yet. Besides, my brother’s going to be at home the whole time.” The thought of trying to explain any of this to Joel makes my cheeks burn. He’d think I’d completely lost it. “Look, I’m really sorry, but can’t you … go back? Your mum’s still in Edinburgh, right? You could get the train back down and…”
Neon’s face clouds over. “Are you serious? I came here for you, saved you from looking like a compulsive liar in front of your friends, and you’re telling me to get lost five minutes later? You’re supposed to bemyfriend too, you know.”
I feel a rush of guilt. If this boy really is Neon, then he must actually believe we’re friends. All the long conversations we had, the thousands of messages swapping stories and songs and secrets – somehow, to him, they were real. If I’d come this far to see a friend and they were acting the way I am now, I’d be really upset too.
“I’m sorry. Iamhappy you’re here. I just … wasn’t expecting for it to actually happen.” I glance into the shop and see Caitlin and Hannah walking back towards us, both holding paper carrier bags. “Of course you can come back to mine. We’ll work something out.”
Neon nods, his eyes still fixed on the poster in front of him. For a moment, I worry that Caitlin and Hannah will pick up on the tension between Neon and me, but then he asks what they bought and laughs when Caitlin shows him some ridiculously huge false eyelashes, and the atmosphere clears so quickly it’s like our disagreement never happened.
At four o’clock, I remember my promise to Mutti that I would be home before she and Mum go to the airport. Hannah still has some stuff to buy, so Neon and I leave her and Caitlin at the shopping centre and hurry off to the bus station. We almost miss the number seventeen because Neon keeps stopping to look at things: the front window of a health-food shop, a statue of a unicorn, a tiny chihuahua yapping outside a newsagent’s…
“This place must seem really boring compared to New York,” I say.
I’ve never left Europe, but I spent so long looking up photos and information about Neon’s neighbourhood that I feel like I’ve been there. I picked it because I liked the name – Alphabet City. I read reviews of local businesses to choose Neon’s favourite deli and ice-cream shop. I looked up timetables to find which bus or subway lines he would take to get to different places, found photos from parks and beautiful brownstone buildings to post to his account, then edited them slightly so they couldn’t be easily reverse-searched. I could write a guidebook about somewhere that I’ve never even been.
“You only think this place is boring because you’re so used to it.” Neon leans down to inspect some dandelions growing round the foot of a lamp post. “It doesn’t look like that to me. It’s really different than – hey, check that out!”
He spots a snail among the weeds and tries to pick it up, but I hurry him towards the station and join the queue of people waiting to get the bus back to our town. Before we reach the front of the line, Neon clears his throat.
“So, minor problem. I don’t have any money.”
